Chapter 177: The Match between Zhang Junming and Lu Peide (Part 1)

Last week, the semi-finals of the "Chef King Competition" were held, and Zhang Hongxing from Kunhe Building won.

Next up was the match between Zhang Junming and Lu Peide. In fact, everyone already thought that Lu Peide's win was a foregone conclusion.

But Yue Ning always has some unique tricks, so everyone wants to see what new tricks Yue Ning can come up with. Also, Zhang Junming's coach today is Yue Ning, and Lu Peide's assistant is also Yue Ning, and Lu Peide has already confirmed that he will join Baohua Building, so everyone wants to see who she will help today.

When Yue Ning arrived at the recording site, she was first taken to the news studio. The anchor asked her, who do you hope will win today?

"What are you talking about? I'm the boss of Baohualou, so of course I hope Baohualou wins. I'll just be Lu Peide's assistant and be a good tool. I'll cut, match and translate well." Yue Ning said, "My uncle A Ming has been forced to practice his cooking skills every day these days. I dare say that it's still unknown who will win or lose in today's duel!"

Yue Ning's interview was broadcast on the news, further whetting the audience's appetite.

At this moment, she had put on her chef uniform and stood beside Lu Peide. Opposite them were Zhang Junming and Ma Yaoxing from Baohua Building.

The host asked Zhang Junming what materials he brought today. Zhang Junming opened a thermos bucket and said, "I brought some jelly. Actually, jelly can be made on site. I will explain it in detail later. But it takes five or six hours to make soup and more than three hours to freeze it, so I just brought it."

He took out another plastic bag: "There is also a piece of rice cake. The New Year is coming soon, add some rice cake to suit the occasion."

"There are rice cakes on site. Are you still taking this?"

"Ningning learned how to make this rice cake from Old Mrs. Qiao. It's delicious," said Zhang Junming.

The host immediately handed the microphone to Yue Ning: "Ms. Yue, did you learn this from Old Lady Qiao?"

"Yes! Every year the whole Qiao family makes rice cakes together. This year I went too and learned from Grandma Qiao. The rice cakes made by beating with a stone hammer more than 3,000 times are really different. The dish Uncle A Ming is serving today is Ning Yan's upcoming New Year dish 'Year after Year of Fish'." Yue Ning took the opportunity to advertise.

It was Lu Peide's turn. Lu Peide still brought his unique soup stock and a few green rice dumplings leaves.

"Making rice dumplings?" asked the host.

Yue Ning asked Lu Peide, and he smiled and replied, "Keep it a secret."

The host did not ask further questions, and asked: "Are you confident that you can win?"

He was humble: “I’ll do my best.”

The host announced the start of the competition.

Yue Ning followed Lu Peide with a basket. Lu Peide took out the soaked whole wings, lamb offal, lamb legs, pig's trotters, and ham and chicken skeletons for making soup.

The two families went to the eels together and both picked yellow eels.

The eels were gutted by assistants.

The judges were excited, and Chef He said, "Are they going to make the same dish?"

"This is such a coincidence. However, Ning Yan has several Huaiyang dishes. The braised fish head that Lu Peide made last time was also a Huaiyang dish. Are they going to make them too..."

"It's possible."

Yue Ning returned to the chopping board, and Lu Peide said, "Please help me with the eight pieces of lamb."

"Okay!" Yue Ning cleaned and processed the mutton offal.

Yue Ning said into the microphone: "Brother Lu is going to make the number one halal dish, braised sea sheep."

Xu Lemei turned to Yang Yuhe and asked, "You who are well-informed, tell me what sea sheep frying is."

Yang Yuhe said with a little pride: "He is indeed well-informed. This braised sea sheep was a dish that was served to Einstein."

"Have you ever entertained Einstein?" Chef He also became interested.

"In the 1920s, Einstein was invited to visit China and had this dish in Shanghai. The 'sea' in this dish refers to seafood, and shark fin, sea cucumber, and fish maw are all fine. If you want a simple recipe, just cook lamb tenderloin together. If you want it to be authentic, you must have eight pieces of lamb: lamb spinal cord, lamb brain, lamb eye, lamb tendon, lamb gourd, lamb tripe plate, lamb tripe mushroom head, and lamb sandalwood. It's not easy to get all eight pieces together, especially the lamb spinal cord, which is such a short section in the spine of a sheep. How come we have all of them today?" Yang Yuhe was still very surprised.

Yue Ning was cleaning the mutton offal, and she heard everything Yang Yuhe said. It was indeed easy to get mutton, but it was not easy to get all eight parts of the mutton.

Lu Peide called her the day before yesterday and said he wanted to cook sea lamb, but the competition only allowed three kinds of ingredients or seasonings, and he wanted eight pieces of lamb, and asked if they could prepare them on site. If they didn't have them, he would just make do with lamb tenderloin.

Usually there is mutton and mutton offal on site, but it may not be complete. The sponsor of the competition is the Guangdong Agricultural Products Import and Export Company, and for Yue Ning, it is just a matter of making a phone call. She helped with this small favor.

Chef He looked at Yue Ning who was cleaning the mutton offal and said, "This Chef Lu is really rude. He uses Yue Ning too much. If it was his previous assistant, how could he dare to cook such a complicated dish?"

Yue Ning told Lu Peide about their conversation. Lu Peide, who was cutting a pork elbow, smiled and said, "Of course. If it weren't for you, I would have to think twice about making this dish, not to mention this one."

"Baohualou has got a lot of things. What are they going to do?" asked Chef He.

"I don't know. I don't understand." Yang Yuhe replied.

Sure enough, there was a pile of things on the table in Baohua Building: pork liver, pig ears, chicken, eggs, duck, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts... Was this going to be a hodgepodge?

Zhang Junming and Ma Yaoxing were very busy cooking this and frying that.

One was making braised sea lamb, which required a lot of preparation work; the other had so many ingredients for some unknown reason. In short, both companies had a lot of preparation work to do today.

As time passed, Yue Ning finished cooking the lamb. She took a sip of water and saw a plate of live shrimps in front of her: "Please peel the shrimps for me."

"Okay." Yue Ning began to peel the prawns.

Lu Peide cut the purple cabbage, squeezed out the purple-red vegetable juice, and soaked it in water with curry powder.

Yue Ning handed the peeled shrimp to Lu Peide, who saw a large pile of prepared ingredients on the table at Baohua Building. He murmured, "There are so many, how many cold dishes should we make?"

Yue Ning said calmly: "One."

"One?" Lu Peide looked at her in surprise.

"Yes." Yue Ning said proudly.

She also translated their conversation into Cantonese.

The host went to Baohua Building and the camera was pointed at the dishes that had been prepared on the table.

The host asked, "Chef Zhang, Miss Yue said, you have so many dishes, so you only want to make one cold dish?"

Zhang Junming, who was unpacking crab meat, said, "Yes, there are nine kinds in total. The red one is duck breast marinated with red yeast rice and Chinese medicinal materials. I think everyone knows the meat egg roll. The pheasant roll has appeared in the competition before. These two are steamed with egg whites and egg yolks separately..."

Zhang Junming introduced them one by one, and Yue Ning told them to Lu Peide. He said, "Do you want to do a big cold fight?"

"Yes!" Yue Ning nodded.

Zhang Junming opposite had already peeled the crab meat, poured the peeled crab shells into the pot and fried them, then added the stewed broth and simmered it.

Lu Peide watched Zhang Junming cooking in an orderly manner and smiled slightly in his heart.

When I watched the first show, to be honest, Zhang Junming is a good cook, but not good enough to compete with me. Although Zhang Junming's second show was not as dramatic as the first, he has actually started to make steady progress, and the most outstanding thing about Baohualou is that it has always been innovative.

His original intention of participating in the competition was to let the restaurant owners in Hong Kong and Macau see his cooking skills. Now his wish has come true. Yue Ning is a better boss than he imagined. Why should he be obsessed with winning or losing at the moment?

"After watching your match, he was a little timid. Ah Xing told him to fight with all his strength, and if he lost, he could just keep practicing, because you would be admitted to Baohua Building anyway." Yue Ning whispered to him, "Even if we are colleagues in the future, we are still rivals now, right?"

"Yes." After Lu Peide seasoned the prawns, he said to Yue Ning, "Crack them into shrimp chips."

The host prompted: "Let's move on to the cold dish competition."

Lu Peide took out a tightly rolled pork elbow from the refrigerator. He made the Beijing style pork elbow flower, but he tied the elbow with rice leaves, so the elbow had the aroma of rice leaves.

Celery, lettuce and cucumber, three kinds of green ingredients with layers of colors, were sliced ​​and placed on a large white porcelain plate, forming distant mountains. The pork elbow slices were placed underneath, forming rocks. The celery was cut into shreds and scattered on the edges of the pork elbow, like tender grass beside the rocks.

The mountain scenery is made up of only two colors, emerald green and maroon, but it is very layered.

Lu Peide prepared a dipping sauce and his cold dish was ready.

Over at Baohua Building, two chefs were working together to piece together various ingredients. From their large round porcelain plate, the upper body of a phoenix emerged.

Are they going to use nine ingredients of different colors and flavors to create a colorful phoenix?

Yue Ning had already cracked all the shrimps, and Lu Peide said to her, "Great."

“You too!”

Lu Peide poured the prepared purple cabbage juice into the pot and brought it to a boil. He then slightly rolled the shrimp slices that Yue Ning had pounded into thin slices into the purple-red soup one by one, and the shrimp slices were rolled into irregular shapes.

After the shrimp crackers of this color are blanched, put the other shrimp crackers in the soup with curry powder, and finally blanch the white shrimp crackers.

He rolled three colors of shrimp chips into three peony flowers, used braised mushrooms as branches, carved cucumber peels into peony leaves, carrot grains into stamens, and carved a bee from a yellow pepper resting on a white peony.

This delicious cold dish is now ready.

The judges tasted the pork elbow made by Lu Peide and stared at the cold dish prepared by Zhang Junming and Ma Yaoxing. This cold dish was probably the most complicated cold dish in the three "Chef King Contests".

Finally, Zhang Junming put the last half of the pigeon egg to decorate the tail feathers, and raised his hand: "Phoenix is ​​flying, done."

This dish was brought to the judges' table, and several judges stood up in unison and bent over to look at the dish.

Phoenix dishes are not uncommon. Yue Ning likes to use dragons and phoenixes, cucumbers, and carrots, which he carves into phoenix shapes all day long. Meat and vegetable platters are also not uncommon, like Lu Peide's, which has a far-reaching combination of meat and vegetables, and the colorful flowers made of shrimp chips. Of course, there are also assorted platters with a lot of ingredients put together.

How can I put it! Even before tasting the flavor, the shape of this colorful phoenix is ​​enough to amaze everyone.

"Let the audience see it too!" said Yang Yuhe.

The dish was brought down again for the audience to see.

Everyone knew that this match would be exciting, but no one thought that Zhang Junming could beat Lu Peide.

No matter in whose heart, Lu Peide and Yue Ning are the successors of the northern and southern styles of Cantonese cuisine, and it is hard to tell who is better between the two of them.

Now that this cold dish is out, Zhang Junming can win just by the presentation. It really seems that it is still uncertain who will win the title of chef king!